


T Is For Temporal, Being

by Magnavox_23



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alphabet Soup Challenge, Episode: s02e16 A Matter of Time, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-15 23:40:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3466355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magnavox_23/pseuds/Magnavox_23
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Colonel O’Neill believes in ‘letting sleeping ghosts lie’, though ghosts require no sleep.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	T Is For Temporal, Being

**Author's Note:**

> Written for sg_fignewton's SG-1 Gen Fic Day Time Travel Alphabet Soup. My love as always to eilidh17 for her wondrous beta skills. <3 Set early season seven.

“Tell me again why we’re playing with black holes? In particular this black hole, of which I am none too fond…”

Sam held back an eye roll as she and Teal’c carried her equipment down the steps from the gate. “This is the closest planet with a gate to the black hole, aside from P3W-451 of course, and a recent scouting mission by the Prometheus suggests the black hole’s gravity has just reached this planet. So, it seems an ideal time to measure the effects of that gravity from a relatively safe distance.” Sam’s poker face was firmly in place before Jack swung around to glare at her. “Sir.”

“Fine!” Jack snapped off. “Just tell me the moment things start… sucking.”

Sam nodded enthusiastically.

“Ok, Sam knows what she is doing. Daniel, Teal’c, you can set up camp, and I will secure the perimeter. Back in ten.”

Daniel watched as Jack resettled his weapon and strode off. “He’s not happy about this mission.”

“Colonel O’Neill believes in ‘letting sleeping ghosts lie’, though ghosts require no sleep.” Teal’c set about unpacking their supplies.

~(O.O)~

Jack couldn’t stop himself from staring up at the sky, wondering for a glimpse of the back hole, even though in reality, he knew it would be impossible to see. Sam had explained the acute angle of the accretion disc relative to this world, but Jack knew it was out there.

The crunch of leaves underfoot and soft breeze did nothing to belay the unease Jack felt about being here.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood to attention the moment they had stepped foot through the gate. Now, he trod wearily, senses alert for anything to explain the feeling in his gut.

He picked his way through the forest, climbing fallen tree logs and watched the vines twist and turn in sunbeams. Any other place, and Jack would have thought it quite serene.

It was when he bent down on small rocks next to a stream to retrieve a water sample for Sam to test, that Jack became aware of the presence behind him. Slowly he fingered the safety off his weapon. He rose to full height, ready to turn.

“Colonel O’Neill!”

Jack spun around, finding nothing but earth, and a sunbeam not quite as still as the others. Then a face appeared. “Jack!”

The light shifted toward him and Jack took an automatic step back, which caused him to slip on the rocks and fall backwards into the shallow stream.

Henry Boyd floated above him.

~(O.O)~

Jack knew the moment he came to that he had only been unconscious mere seconds. He quickly catalogued his minimal aches and pains. Nothing broken, ok to move. Once upright, he felt the back of his head. Only a small cut, but a nice amount of blood, seeing as it had been submersed in the water. He watched the blood on his hand mix and swirl with the water, turning pink as the droplets fell from his fingertips.

“What happened to your hair?”

Jack’s gaze lifted to what appeared to be Major Henry ‘Hank’ Boyd, killed in action, Jan 29th, 1999. Five years ago.

“Well it just got a dunking, water tends to get one wet.” Jack hauled himself from the stream, shaking off what water he could. Maybe Henry Boyd was still there. “Perhaps I hit my head harder than I thought…”

Boyd didn’t respond.

Jack regarded the apparition for a moment. It looked like Boyd. “What do you want?”

It took a moment for Boyd’s expression to clear, as if he was finding it hard to concentrate on Jack’s query. “Help us, Jack.”

“Us?”

“SG-10, we’re here, in one form or another.”

“Form?” Jack’s eyebrows rose and his chin jutted in gesture to Boyd’s currently somewhat transparent appearance.

“I don’t know how to explain it, sir. We were literally ripped apart, it was the most unimaginable--” Boyd collected himself. “We’re still here. What’s left of us, our consciousnesses. We’re some kind of energy. Cassidy thinks we’re trapped in the black hole’s gravity--”

Boyd’s sentence was cut off as an ungodly scream sounded around them. Jack’s head whipped around hoping it wasn’t Sam. Another light flew by, the faint outline of a woman’s face etched in agony. Her painful scream settled along Jack’s spine.

“What the hell is that!” Jack’s fingers scrambled to secure his weapon, ready to defend himself against the howl.

“Cassidy. What’s left of her.” Boyd’s form lost its collectiveness momentarily as he winced. “Our minds are also being torn apart, but at a much slower rate. Listing and Klein are mere remnants of themselves, more far gone than Cassidy. And… I can feel it happening to me, too, my mind being… torn apart. We need you to end it. Kill us.”

Jack blinked a few times, either trying to find the woman or convince himself of her imagined existence, he wasn’t sure. He’d seen all sorts of floaty beings, good and bad, but that was just… wrong. And if the headache forming behind his eyes was any indication, possibly not even real. But if it was? Could he?

Kill them?

“How?” Jack turned back to Boyd. “You’re as close to dead as you can get.” Jack waved his weapon through the semi-transparent man to further illustrate his point.

Boyd looked down to watch Jack’s movements.

A bullet would be so simple.

“Cassidy, she… she thought disrupting the black hole’s gravity somehow, temporarily, could release us into…” Boyd’s hands rose, palms up as if offering a prayer, and followed it with a half-shrug.

“Ok.” Jack shook his head and immediately regretted it as spots danced around his vision. “Say you’re real, and that you’re not a figment of my throbbing head and overactive guilt-ridden imagination… you have to know the United States Air Force is never going to sanction a mercy killing mission.”

The light forming Boyd’s image flared. “God, Jack! Don’t you think I know that? That’s why I’m so glad it’s you. It had to be you.”

Jack cleared his throat, and faced away from the spectacle spectre who was doing him no favours.

“I didn’t need to read your service file to guess what’s in there. You’ll do it.”

Anger flared in Jack’s mind, giving him no reprieve for the steadily building headache.

“Screw you, Hank.”

~(O.O)~

Daniel was the only one around to see Jack’s soaking uniform and slight sway as he emerged from the forest and walked into the campsite. “Jack! What the hell happened to you?” He rushed to Jack’s side to offer support and propped Jack against a log next to the fire

“Oh, a little run in with a stream.” Jack blinked a few times until there was only one of Daniel.

Daniel grabbed the med kit and set about cleaning the cut on Jack’s head.

“Ah!” Jack pulled away as Daniel applied antiseptic to the wound. Daniel grabbed Jack’s chin to hold him in place as he applied more.

“Baby.”

“Sadist.”

Daniel held back the myriad of nouns at his disposal. “What happened?”

“Slipped on a rock getting Carter’s water sample, smacked my head. I was out of it maybe ten seconds I figure. A couple of spots, headache, ghosts, I’ll be fine. Got any Tylenol in there?”

Daniel passed Jack the pills. “How did you hit the back of your head collecting the water… wait, what do you mean ‘ghosts’?”

Jack winced, the water he washed the pills down with settling cold in his stomach. “Nothing, Daniel.”

Daniel ripped open a field dressing in frustration. “That’s not nothing, you have a head injury, hallucinations are serious, we should…”

“I wasn’t hallucinating, at least, I don’t think I was. You’re not going to believe it.”

Daniel sighed and looked around their alien surroundings. “I think at this point, I could pretty much believe anything.”

“Therein lies the difference between you and I.”

“Jack! Just…” Daniel eyeballed Jack, urging him to just spill it.

Ok, he could do this. He’d seen other people who may or may not have been there. Present company included. “I saw Hank Boyd.”

His words were met with Daniel’s blank expression. “Recent amnesiac, Jack. Who?”

“SG-10, they were… sucked into a black hole a few years ago, or so we thought.” Jack hesitantly peeked at Daniel through the corner of one eye.

Daniel’s brow creased as he mentally sorted through the mission files he had read since his return. “Oh… Oh! This black hole? The one we’re here to study? Jack, that’s…”

“Crazy, I know.”

“That’s amazing! How could they survive?”

“They didn’t.”

“But how?”

“I don’t know. Their physical bodies are gone, but their minds are sorta floating around inside the black hole’s gravity. Trapped within it. Hank says they’re not doin’ so good.”

“Oh my God.” Daniel was dumbfounded. “Those poor… could we have known this would be a possibility? We left them to this fate, we need to help them. What can we--”

“Daniel.” Jack met his eyes. “There’s no way we can save them. Hank…” the words caught in his throat. “He asked me to end it.”

Both men sat quietly for a moment, taking in the magnitude of the situation.

“What other option do we have? If that’s… I think we have to do it, Jack.”

“I know, but how? This sort of thing would never get approval. If we… we can’t tell anyone. Hammond, the SGC, heck, I’d have left you out of it if I kept my big mouth shut.”

“Yes, but then you wouldn’t have me to suggest overloading the naquahdah generator Sam brought along. Even though you’ve, you know, done it before.”

Jack looked away. “Yeah, but I shouldn’t have.”

“Maybe.”

Jack sighed.

“Colonel O’Neill, come in.” Sam’s voice sounded from Jack’s radio.

“Yeah, Carter?”

“Teal’c and I are about half a click from the camp, and… I think we have just seen something I’m not sure you’ll believe, sir.”

Jack and Daniel looked at one another.

“Oh, I’m not too sure about that at the moment. What’s up?”

“Some sort of light or energy flying about. And sir, she had a face, a rather familiar one.”

Jack could tell from the cadence of Sam’s voice she was hesitant to explain further over the radio.

“Copy that, fall back to camp. Over.” Jack tossed his radio onto his pack.

“I guess you didn’t hit your head that hard after all.”

Jack glared at Daniel.

~(O.O)~

Sam’s eyes widened as Daniel filled her in on Jack’s exchange with Boyd, while Jack was stretched out by the fire. He rested against his pack with his hat over his eyes to combat the dying remnants of his headache, not to hide his face from his team’s questioning gazes and possible judgements.

“I mean, I never even considered…” he heard Sam’s voice. “I can’t believe we left them behi--”

“Carter!” Jack barked, his hat falling from his face as he rose and met her face on.

Sam’s expression was full of guilt and he imagined it was probably pretty similar to his own. His ire softened. “Had we known… ugh!” Jack rubbed his temples. That sounded familiar. “Daniel wants to blow the generator.”

If it were possible, Sam’s eyes grew bigger. He knew she was thinking the same thing he was. And he wasn’t going there again.

“Theoretically, an explosion could temporarily disrupt the gravity of the black hole in a specific locale. Whether that would be enough to free them…”

“It will have to be,” Teal’c intoned.

“Look,” Jack started. “I can’t and I won’t ask any of you to… but if we do this, it can’t get back home.”

“I’m in, sir.”

Jack regarded Sam. He hoped like hell she wasn’t agreeing to this out of guilt or a misplaced sense of duty, otherwise he’d kick her ass after he’d kicked his own.

~(O.O)~

Daniel and Teal’c carried the last of their supplies and equipment over to the naquahdah generator where Sam was finishing her alterations to force an overload. Jack sat on the steps leading up to the Stargate, his gaze flitting around the forest’s edge for a glimpse of the old SG-10. Maybe he’d seen a few swatches of light, maybe dusk was playing tricks on his eyes. He just wanted this mission over and done with so he could go home, lie his ass off, and pass out for a few days.

“Ready when you are, sir.” Sam rose from her crouched position over the generator.

SG-1 gathered silently, lifting their packs onto weary shoulders.

“Dial us home, Major.”

The locking chevrons were loud in the quiet eve of an alien world, and the event horizon illuminated the path before them to the gate. Jack nodded to himself in response.

SG-1 made their way up the steps, stopping on the gate platform to turn and bid farewell to their fallen friends.

Henry Boyd stood next to the DHD, looking back at them with an expression of peaceful resolve as three more lights orbited his translucent form. “Bye, Jack.” His wave formed into a salute, which Jack returned with stone-faced precision. “Into the wild blue yonder,” Jack murmured in reply.

~(O.O)~

Epilogue

“Chevron seven is locked!” Walter announced. “Receiving SG-1’s IDC.”

“Open the iris,” Hammond ordered.

The watery wall of the Stargate’s event horizon spit forth the four members of SG-1.

“Shut it down!” Jack commanded.

Hammond made his way from the control room down to meet the team. He noticed they were severely lacking in the supplies and equipment they had taken with them. “Report.”

“Unforeseen effects from the black hole’s gravity, sir, and Colonel O’Neill sustained a head injury. We thought it best to get back here while we still could.”

Damn but Sam’s poker face was near perfection, Jack mused.

“Things got a little sucky, sir.” Jack scrubbed his hair with his hand. Lying to George was never easy.

“Understood,” George replied. “Colonel, get yourself down to the infirmary, we’ll debrief at 0800 tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir.”

As SG-1 left the gate room, George readied himself for the half-truths and falsehoods he knew SG-1 would have a damn good reason for using in his presence. Whatever had happened on that planet, he was at least glad for their return.

~(O.O)~

Jack stared at what few stars he could see through the trees outside his bedroom window. Sometimes doing the right thing was rewarding, and sometimes it was hell. Jack wasn’t sure which category this mission fell into just yet. Jack O’Neill, interstellar dunce. _Il Matto…_

“Sucker,” he whispered to the night air.

Half a galaxy away, Henry Boyd and his team were free.

  
[](http://36.media.tumblr.com/9e7f772c8c622edf0286338bfa89e7fa/tumblr_nkkn6pZ0LY1suv42bo1_1280.png)   



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